Energy and Mass Balance in Prominences

Abstract

In his book “Solar Prominences” Tandberg-Hanssen (1974) reviewed several papers related to the energy balance, some of which assumed that a continuum description is valid. A sufficient condition for the application of the magneto-hydrodynamic equations is that the plasma be collision dominated. This corresponds to requiring that the mean free paths for particle collisions for all species be much smaller than the characteristic length scale for macroscopic change and that the particle collision intervals be much shorter than the characteristic time scale for macroscopic change.